Lucio Gutiérrez (born March 23, 1957, Quito, Ecuador) is an Ecuadoran army colonel and politician who served as president of Ecuador (2003–05).
Gutiérrez was raised in Tena, an Amazon basin town. He was the son of a traveling salesman and attended primary and secondary school in Tena before transferring at age 15 to a military college in Quito. Gutiérrez graduated from the Army Polytechnic School as a civil engineer after having won honours for academic and athletic prowess. He later studied in Brazil and the United States.
Gutiérrez rose steadily through the army ranks and in 1990–92 served with the United Nations observer mission to Nicaragua. As a young man, he demonstrated little interest in politics, but during the 1990s he sympathized with fellow Ecuadorans as they became increasingly disenchanted with corruption and poverty. In 1997, as aide-de-camp to Pres. Abdalá Bucaram Ortiz, he refused an order to use force against a crowd outside the presidential palace. Bucaram fled the palace and was later removed from office by the National Congress. In 1999 Gutiérrez repeatedly questioned the government’s conduct and pointedly refused to shake Pres. Jamil Mahuad Witt’s hand during a public ceremony in December.
On January 21, 2000, after Mahuad announced the replacement of Ecuador’s national currency with the U.S. dollar—a move that would increase the cost of basic commodities—he was removed from the presidency in a coup engineered by indigenous leaders and middle-ranking military officers. Gutiérrez announced that he and two others had formed a “junta of national salvation.” The rebellion was short-lived, however; Gutiérrez lacked the confidence of the military high command. He was replaced in the junta by Gen. Carlos Mendoza, the armed forces chief of staff, who announced that Vice Pres. Gustavo Noboa Bejarano would succeed Mahuad.
Jailed after the uprising, Gutiérrez was pardoned in June 2000 after a public campaign led by his wife, Ximena Bohórquez Romero, a physician, with whom he had two daughters. He left the army, founded the Patriotic Society Party of January 21 (Partido Sociedad Patriótica 21 de Enero; PSP), and plunged into civilian politics, promising an all-out war on corruption, racial inequality, and poverty. The PSP supported Gutiérrez’s candidacy for president in 2002. Ecuadorans, hungry for fresh solutions to their country’s seemingly endless difficulties, gave him a resounding mandate in the elections. Gutiérrez, then a political outsider, defeated banana billionaire Alvaro Noboa in the second round of voting for the presidency on November 24. He was inaugurated on January 15, 2003.
As president, Gutiérrez dropped his early opposition to the adoption of the U.S. dollar and instituted austerity measures that included cuts in food and electricity. In August 2003 he lost the congressional support of the New Country–Pachakutik Movement, a coalition formed in 1998 whose electoral support came mainly from indigenous groups, and the future of his legislative program was thrown into doubt.
When Gutiérrez filled Supreme Court positions with political allies in December 2004, antigovernment demonstrations ensued in the capital. In April 2005 the court dropped corruption charges against former president Bucaram, and again violent protests erupted in Quito. After Gutiérrez dissolved the Supreme Court, hoping to calm the rioters, he was ousted by the National Congress the following week. He fled the country and sought political asylum in Colombia. While in Bogotá, Gutiérrez accused his successor, Alfredo Palacio, of overthrowing him in a coup. Gutiérrez returned to Ecuador in October 2005 and was arrested for threatening national security. The charges were dropped in March 2006, and Gutiérrez was released.
He ran unsuccessfully for president in the 2009 elections. The following year, protests against Pres. Rafael Correa escalated into a virtual coup attempt, which Correa blamed on Gutiérrez’s supporters. Gutiérrez, however, denied any wrongdoing. In 2013 he staged another failed bid for the presidency.